5 takeaways from Celtics' incredible Game 6 victory

by 24britishtvMay 28, 2023, 10 a.m. 40
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MIAMI — His team fell behind by a point with eight minutes left, after leading almost the entire game. Three minutes later, the Boston Celtics were up by 10. It still was nine a couple minutes after that.

And then the floor really fell out, and Jaylen Brown and his teammates had to stand there, helplessly, as Miami’s Jimmy Butler lined up three free throws with three seconds left.

The first made got the Heat within 102-101. The second tied it. The third put Miami ahead and seemingly on its way to the 2023 NBA Finals.

Brown’s thoughts and emotions there and then, with the Celtics’ season on the brink?

“In all honesty, at that point, I’m in full prayer mode,” Boston’s All-NBA guard said. “Whatever prayer I got, whatever dua I got, reciting it over and over in my head.”

Little did Brown or anyone else realize how remarkably Derrick White was about to answer his teammate’s call to the heavens, hitting a putback at the buzzer to give Boston a 104-103 victory. Exhilarating for the visitors, stunning to the Heat and its sellout crowd at Kaseya Center Saturday night.

“First to four,” Miami center Bam Adebayo said, trying to impose some sobriety that has careened from one three-game losing streak to another. And he’s right. Both the Celtics and the Heat will get the chance to be first when they play Game 7 Monday at Boston’s TD Garden (8:30 ET, TNT).

In the meantime, here are five takeaways from the Celtics’ Game 6 victory:

1. Maybe that was our Game 7

There was so much chatter in the 48 hours leading up to Saturday about how “Game 6 is Miami’s Game 7.” Well, yes, as far as the opportunity the Heat didn’t want to squander, a third straight chance to close out Boston without facing elimination yet itself.

But also no, because this series is firmly in Yogi Berra territory now. It ain’t over… you know the rest.

“Ooh-whee,” Boston’s Jayson Tatum said from the postgame podium as he alternately ran his hands over his face and head and marveled at the score sheet before him. “Oh my God. That was incredible. … I’m still like in disbelief. That [bleep] was crazy.”

It was a tortuous, excruciating, marvelous, ridiculous 48 minutes of basketball, spread across two hours and 40 minutes of extreme entertainment. It set a standard that’s going to be difficult for the actual Game 7 to match, never mind surpass.

Heck, it might have a lot of viewers aching vaguely for something more even as the Finals play out over the next couple weeks.

Greedy cusses that we are, we’ll show up or tune in Monday unapologetically expecting to witness this all over again.

“Basketball at its finest,” Butler said.

Boston had plunged itself into the worst sort of nightmare a playoff team can experience, losing once, twice, three times in rapid succession to set up what history told us was inevitable: certain elimination, as demonstrated by the 150 other teams in history that never climbed out of an 0-3 hole in a best-of-seven series. That the Celtics were the higher seed with the legitimate championship aspirations only added embarrassment to their predicament.

Then came Game 4, then Game 5, both Boston victories. Tatum, Brown and the rest appeared to have Game 6 tucked away Saturday, too, until their shots turned cold, the Heat started to grind and then the unthinkable occurred. Al Horford fouled Butler on his lunging shot from the right baseline.

Three things happened in the confusion that followed. Boston coach Joe Mazzulla challenged the call, thinking Horford actually might not have committed the foul. The referees looked at the video as well to determine whether Butler’s feet had stayed behind the 3-point line. And then, as their duty requires, they checked the clock to make sure no time was lost in either direction.

What’s the best way to describe the outcomes? Boston lost, lost and won in the trio of determinations. While Miami won, won and lost. Horford’s foul was legit. Butler’s feet had stayed behind the line. And instead of having only 2.1 seconds left once Butler shot his three free throws, the refs determined there were 3.0 seconds to play.

That additional nine-tenths of a tick was enough for Marcus Smart to miss a turnaround shot from 26 feet and for White to snag the rebound at the rim and for the Celtics guard to flip it up and through to change everything. Pandemonium for Boston. Heat fans filing out, looking distressed and ashen.

Even the Xs and Os of that final play had layers. White had inbounded from the left sideline for Boston. Max Strus ostensibly was his defender but Strus played off and showed toward the top to cut down White’s passing angle to Tatum. He shoveled the pass in to Smart instead, then ran unobstructed from the left wing toward the basket, Strus a little late and behind.

No one there to box him out. That extra 0.9 on the clock, which kept the horn from sounding as Smart’s attempt hit the rim. It was that close. And whoosh it was over.

“It all happened so fast,” Brown said “I know Smart shot it, and I thought it was good. Then Derrick White like a flash of lightning just came out of nowhere and saved the day, man.”

Said Heat coach Erik Spoelstra, who wanted Strus to come off White as he did: “That’s the only place it could have bounced to hurt us. I thought we had a lot of things covered on that play and sometimes things just don’t break your way.”

After the game, one of the ball boys asked Tatum what it felt like to go through something so convulsive, so up and so down in matter of seconds. “I told him you’re aware of the score, you’re aware of what’s happening, but also you don’t understand, like, the magnitude – you’re just staying in the moment.

“I didn’t have time to think like ‘Oh, [bleep], the season might be over.’ It was like ‘No, we’ve got three seconds left, we try and make a play. Whatever happened just happened.’ Nobody was sitting there pouting like ‘Oh, we blew it.’”

Tatum looked like he was going to be Boston’s anti-elimination hero, scoring 25 points in the first half. It suggested a performance like he had in the last round against Philadelphia, late in Game 6 and dominant in Game 7 to lead the Celtics to these East finals. He had done similar heavy lifting against Milwaukee in last year’s semifinals.

But it wasn’t to be. Tatum scored only six more points Saturday, making only one of his final nine shots and missing all eight of his 3-pointers from start to finish. So yeah, 31 points but they hit different, lighter than in those previous performances.

Then there was Butler. Near the end it looked as he was going to be Miami’s clinching hero. The irrepressibly confident forward scored 15 points in the fourth quarter, got to the line for 10 free throws and coolly drained the three pressure ones near the end.

Heck, it looked as if the winner of the Larry Bird Trophy as East Finals MVP was going to get the award on a night he shot 5-for-21. Until the presentation, the celebration, the whole shebang got pushed out to Monday.

“If I play better, we’re not even in this position, honestly speaking,” Butler said. “And I will be better. That’s what makes me smile, because those guys follow my lead.”

Heat contributors Caleb Martin, Gabe Vincent and Duncan Robinson were swell for much of the game, as if holding Butler’s and Bam Adebayo’s coats for a big finish from Miami’s stars. Didn’t happen. Adebayo was strong on the boards with 13 overall and seven offensively, but he missed 12 of his 16 shots.

Spoelstra did have their backs. “I don’t give a damn what they shot,” the coach said. “We were up one. We may win this thing as ugly as it’s ever been done. I don’t care what guys shoot. It’s the competitive will that I’m talking about, and those guys are going to bring it on … it’s the playoffs, so I have no idea what the day is, but I guess, Monday?”

Adebayo logged 45:39 in Game 6. The other big man Spoelstra used, Cody Zeller, picked up the remaining 2:21. That was it. No Kevin Love, no one else of great height or width from Miami’s size-challenged bench.

That didn’t stop Mazzulla from getting quality work from Horford and Robert Williams III. They were helpful statistically, combining for 14 points and 14 rebounds in just over 49 minutes. Time and time again, Miami players found ways to make an extra pass when they turned to see one or the other.

Defensively they were even better, getting enough hands on the ball and bodies on their men to discourage much direct attack by Heat scorers.

“Those two guys, they don’t probably get enough credit,” Mazzulla said. “They’re just staples for us on both ends of the floor. When they play with a level of physicality and presence for us, we’re a different team. There’s a bunch of guys on our team that have different gifts that they bring to the table outside of basketball, and Al and Rob are two guys that bring a sense of joy and just bring a sense of steadiness.”

OK, maybe not everyone. But even committed Heat fans should feel optimistic that their team has one more opportunity to advance to the Finals. And appreciative, too, because by getting pushed to Game 7, Butler, Adebayo and the others fully are back in their comfy counted-out, eighth-seed, chip-on-the-shoulder underdog role. They already have gotten superior mileage from that this spring.

Better still for the rest of us, we’ll get an answer to this postseason’s biggest question to date: Will the Celtics become the first team in NBA history to climb all the way back from an 0-3 start? Or by late Monday will they be added to the list, just the 151st to have tried and failed? For what it’s worth, five of their past eight games have been elimination games, and they’ve won them all.

Add the wild manner in which they survived in Game 6 and it might just propel them. “It gives you a supreme boost in confidence, man,” Brown said. “It doesn’t get too much worse than being down 0-3. We feel like we’ve been to hell and back.”

Then there is Miami, which played more close games good and bad than any other team this season. It stands to become part of history too, if it becomes the first team to ever blow a 3-0 lead.

“Now, at 11:35 [p.m. ET] I have no idea how we are going to get this done,” Spoelstra said.

By Monday night, though, he and his players will take their chances.

Steve Aschburner has written about the NBA since 1980. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on Twitter.

The views on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of the NBA, its clubs or Warner Bros. Discovery.

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